Warbell private playtest #5

[McNite]

Its time for the

5th Playtest of Warbell[/color]

day: Saturday 27th of May
time: 3pm Texas/Winnipeg / 4pm NY / 9pm UK / 10pm Stockholm/Hamburg / 7am (on sunday) Melbourne
server: ]UBC[ |TheRiver| 9maps
IP: 194.105.135.3:27960
pw: ask McNite on saturday
invited: ]UBC[, M8D, B|D and SNA/FBF* and others that are interested

All participants should have teamspeak for easy communication.

Main testing is about gameplay with the improvements from last playtests feedback. Also we ll have some areas finished by then so we r looking for odd things and bugs there.

Major changes from maptest #4:
a) Tunnel Exit, Crypt Gate and Abbey Main Gate got non-mineable areas around them
b) blending technique used in the terrain for smooth transitions between terrain parts
c) free view for snipers from the Abbey roof towards Command Post reduced by tree and rock (also gives more cover for Axis)
d) reworked Bell construction area, Abbey Towers, Side Building, Main Gate, Garden area
e) removed the lake behind the Abbey... its a steep cliff now where you can fall down (and die of course)
f) models of the evil Book in the map!
g) tons of additional look-good-thingies
h) new visual effects in the sacrifice room indicating the spots
i)
j)

I ll update this list as we map along.

Plz post feedback from playtest 4 in the thread for playtest 4, not in here.

[McNite]

I invited league admins/ referees, admins of popular servers and experienced mappers to this playtest too. Those I already confirmed by pm ar on this

VIP List

kamikazee (mapper from SD forum) - will be in
carnage (mapper from SD forum)
splodge (warleague admin, leaguenation moderator) - can't make it
BadMac (etnation member)
FireFly (mapper from SD forum)

(This list will being kept updated.)


Clans invited
]UBC[, =FBF=, B|D and M8D

[McNite]

Guys, its playtest time tonight!!! ;D

[pax]

Nice.....it's a great map. Thanks for the good time. Think I sacrificed myself twice..... ;D

[carnage]

back from playtest number 5 first one i have been to and i dont know what they were up to in the other four but this one was a very promising game. there wasnt one ocasion where the map seems to give one team a great advantage over the other and with pretty small walks to the action its fast and furious

also it seemed that teams who used suport weapons like the mobile mg could real benefit from them on asult of defence

after just one quick run though of the map the layout is pretty simple to traverse but the multiple overlaping routes though the castle make for some interesting taticas and allow skiled coverts to get some serious backstab kills if you make your way up to the roof

the only critasism regarding the layout/navigation is the very final stage in the castle that can be quite tricky as there isnt realy much to pick one area from another building more destinct features and each rooms and using differnt lighting in them as the yellow one seems pretty overbright and a bit washed out for underground

also the river at the very start seems to have benk that are just slightly too big to climb out witch was very anoying cos it looked like i should have been able to get out but couldnt. maby lower the water level just a few units so its look less like a climb out

haveing now critisised i would like to go into all the good points but you can all find them for yourslefes when you play and hopefuly that shouldnt be too long judging by how well this beta went

keep up the good work

[Reptilo]

Oh yeah!!! How enjoyable this map is sooooooooooo cool! As much as The_River hehehe. It's good to know that i play ET with such great players like you all.

[McNite]

Here are the feedbacks of kamikazee and firefly who joined us in the playtest:

Kamikazee:
The water edge is not a real problem if you're axis, you can get out at the guardhouse.

The only "glitch" I found locally is that you can get on top of the monastery's church. (The circle shaped roof, that is, not all the wood-textured roofs around it.)
It just needs 2 clip brushes to fix, or you could make a true camping spot out of it.

Apart from that I'll need to play my demo to see what happened at what point in time. But I must say that the map played quite good. It never really "choked up", neither went straight to an end.

Impressive work, I'll post if I find things worth bothering.

Firefly:
I joined the Warbell playtest #5 last Saterday evening. I had a great time playing the map: It's a fun map to play and well designed.

The map played really well: In my opinion it's well balanced, there are no choke points whatsoever. I believe it was designed for 6v6 to 10v10 players, but I think that the map will also play great with even more players. The objectives are original and watching a player completing one of the final 3 objectives was great fun.

I had some trouble finding my way inside the Abbey, But I understand that you're already working on it by giving the rooms in the Abbey different looks.

Inside the caves (great looking caves by the way) I accidentally felt in the water a few times... Once inside the water you're stuck there. Perhaps a rope or ladder to get out on the same side where the wooden fence is: This way players cannot use the water as a shortcut towards the abbey, but still can manage to climb out.

The side entrance (the small iron gate that axis can destroy with satchel) often got ignored by both axis and allied players: I don't know if this is a good or a bad thing, just something I noticed. Playing Axis I often had no problem entering the Abbey this way.

fps / r_speeds: r_speeds are very, very good in the map. The max tris I got was around 22/24K, and that was only in one particular place within the map (Some of the ET stock maps have a max tris of 30 to even 40K!). Overall I got 11 to 13K tris. It clearly shows that the map was well planned /designed from scratch.

Again, The map was fun to play and reminded me of the 'good old' rtcw maps. I hope to play it again on public servers soon

Good luck

Their original posts are in this thread on the SD forum

[McNite]

Here are my thoughts after playtest 5:

The work on gameplay is done. The map works fine in all stages. With the new terrain textures the areas in front of dynamitable objectives can't be mined that much anymore, so that worked well too.

We ll work in the feedbacks regarding navitation in the Abbey, the river exits, and the way up on the main roof of the Abbey.

"Only" thing left to do now: finish the looks of the map. Lets get it done.